Maxing FFXI's Graphical Capabilities

[Xanthe]

Wow that sounds great. I bet it would give a nice boost for FF load speeds, eh?

[Amele]

Wow that sounds great. I bet it would give a nice boost for FF load speeds, eh?

it does, but I moved FF off it to make room for a second OS partition (FF is kind of space hungry) - if you weren't planning to set up a dual boot it'd be a great use for the other ~16-20GB that your OS isn't using.

[shinoniken]

q6600 at 425 with x8 multiplier, aftermarket hsf of course, idles mid-low 40s, peaks at a little under 70 under full load. Ram at 1.5x, afraid to put them any higher cause they have shitty cooling, need to get some velociraptors.
Benches 10908 on vanabench on high, 12318 on low.

In game handles pretty damned well, there's still the shitty engine problems, but dynamis runs smooth without turning down the settings.

[Kohan]

There's a guide which I've written that is specifically about tweaking FFXI, which includes registry edits and more. If you'd like to read it, it's here:

http://z10.invisionfree.com/TheShado...showtopic=1407

The post is public, you don't need to register on the forums to see it. As a forewarning, it is quite long, but it's written to be easy for anyone to read.

[Xanthe]

I looked up the SSD you're using, Amele, and dang that's an expensive one, at least on Amazon (not available on NewEgg). I assume it's because of the superior R/W bandwidth, but it's a hefty price tag. Where do you suggest buying that drive? I may hold off on SSD for now if I can't find a decent price.

I'm going to check out that P182SE case this afternoon at a local dealer (FrozenCPU) since I can get it a lot cheaper than NewEgg on top of no shipping fees. Pretty sure I'll pick it up. I'm getting excited for this build now. It's my first one in about 7 years, so I'm overdue for an upgrade. :D

[Amele]

I looked up the SSD you're using, Amele, and dang that's an expensive one, at least on Amazon (not available on NewEgg). I assume it's because of the superior R/W bandwidth, but it's a hefty price tag. Where do you suggest buying that drive? I may hold off on SSD for now if I can't find a decent price.

I'm going to check out that P182SE case this afternoon at a local dealer (FrozenCPU) since I can get it a lot cheaper than NewEgg on top of no shipping fees. Pretty sure I'll pick it up. I'm getting excited for this build now. It's my first one in about 7 years, so I'm overdue for an upgrade. :D

I don't think it's actually the best on the market anymore (If I remember correctly Memoright has one out that's even faster) but at the time I picked it up it was. it's the second most expensive component in my rig lol.. right after the CPU.

I'd recommend a shrink wrapped box via ebay personally, I got about 45% off the MSRP going that way. There are several other competitors (Samsung, OCZ) with SSDs out now for much less that will still outperform the latest raptors if you're looking for a better price. (the advantage to the raptors of course is that you get a lot more storage space)

also, you totally have to window kit it. (I did my window kit myself, but If you've never done that before I'd recommend getting it done professionally with this case, this kind of case finish is bad to learn on) the interior of this case looks incredible and has some of the best built-in wire routing available + great look (black finish interior) and it's a waste to hide it behind a blank panel.

what kind of budget do you have overall? if you're close to it already I wouldn't suggest SSD - you get great performance but you do pay out the nose for it lol. (that said, I'm probably saving a lot more money on electricity than I would otherwise - the rapid start up and shut down times have pretty much removed any excuse I used to use to leave it running 24/7)

[Xanthe]

I'm *trying* to keep it under $2500, which I'm meeting at the moment with the above setup, but I'm keeping an open mind since I don't want to short myself on what I plan to make last for quite a while. Regarding window modding it, it's tempting, but I'm not sure I want to. This is going to be residing in my living room, and while it would make for one heck of a view, sticking a window in it would add quite a bit of noise to an otherwise quiet case.

[Amele]

I'm *trying* to keep it under $2500, which I'm meeting at the moment with the above setup, but I'm keeping an open mind since I don't want to short myself on what I plan to make last for quite a while. Regarding window modding it, it's tempting, but I'm not sure I want to. This is going to be residing in my living room, and while it would make for one heck of a view, sticking a window in it would add quite a bit of noise to an otherwise quiet case.

a quiet case? you did see this thing uses 4-5 120mm fans right? (I mean, sure it's really great vibrationally, but it's still going to sound like 7 fans running no matter what you do unless you go for water.

[Xanthe]

Well the 120mm case fans will be a heck of a lot quieter than the 5 80mm case fans I have in my current desktop. Not saying it'll be inaudible, just reasonably quiet. Anyway, FrozenCPU won't even put a window kit in that case, and they kit EVERYTHING. Not a big deal to me anyway. I did run out to FrozenCPU to take a look at some cases, and I'm still somewhat torn between the 1200 and 182SE. Both are beautiful cases with the 1200 having the most eye-catching features, but the 182SE is the clear winner when it comes to minimizing vibration and maximizing cooling efficiency, and the pull-out hard drive cages are really nice. Still leaning towards the 182SE I guess.

[levish]

i just snagged a OCZ Core v2 60GB drive for 298$ shipped :3 (speaking of SSD's)

is plenty for loading up the games 2-3 games i care about access times on :D

[Maeth]

Mmmmmmkay.

So I just received a new machine that is a beast (no one cares). Everything runs superbly and I've got texture resolution up and no slowdowns et cetera. The only thing I find lacking at the moment is the distance.

I've heard of the draw distance plug-in, but how safe is it? Is it PURELY client side?

I'd appreciate the assistance in finding this out since I'd rather not take the risk if it is somehow detectable. From what I gathered long ago you would have to type a command to activate it I thought and if SE supposedly can log text now... feh! I'd like to evade that. Please make my wish come true of this being perfectly fine! :3

[Amele]

drawdistance is purely client side, it is also non-intrusive as far as game mechanics go (it doesn't extend the range at which non-terrain details are drawn) basically it just extends the horizon plane, it doesn't actually draw monsters further away.

the setmob feature just sets the distance at which the fog pane sits on mobs so they don't look grayed out at distance.

[orson]

Someone said that using a square background res my max resolution is 1680x1050 anyone know what the hex code to input in for 2xOversampling on that? Currently I'm using 1024x1024 and I figure my card can probably handle a lot more.